Free Suite of Creativity Applications. Too Good To Be True?

No matter what kind of work you do, there are going to be times when you need to crop or resize a photo, generate a simple and appealing graphic for a presentation, or play around with an image for a flyer or poster. And there are also times when you’d like to be able to edit or convert a audio file or maybe capture a still picture or animation of your screen activity. Not all of us can afford the professional software that allows us to do these tasks, and even if we can we’re not always at the computer where this software is installed.

What to do? Maybe the answer is to go online.

Back in October I wrote about a handful of “free and powerful” online image-editing tools, one of which being a web app called Phoenix. Well, I’ve recently learned that Aviary, the parent company of Phoenix, has made their entire suite of creativity tools available for free to everyone. All of their apps work inside your browser, and you can sign up for a free account that allows you to save your files online at their server.

Now I haven’t had time to learn the ins and outs of their system, and I can only report that the two times I tried to open Phoenix in order to work on a graphic, the browser froze and then crashed. I’m perfectly willing to admit that the problem is on my end (either a too-slow Internet connection or a new-ish browser that hasn’t had all the options updated), but I just haven’t had the time or the need to troubleshoot.

What about you? Have you tried out Aviary’s services? If so, what do you think? Alternately, what’s your solution when you need to accomplish something involving images or sound but you don’t have your preferred tools at hand? Let’s hear from you in the comments.

[Creative Commons licensed photo by flickr user Mike__Lawrence]